That Place You Can't Come Back
by empty gun
Summary: They were different people tonight; they were each other's. Ryuuken/Katagiri.


The first time Ryuuken_ takes_ Kanae Katagiri her long black hair fans out behind her, running from her temples like ink. He has seen her so rarely without the bun wound and knotted tightly on her head that it seems like he's seeing her more naked without it. Her shirt is unbuttoned down to her navel, two little white buttons holding it closed, her breasts bare. But it's her hair, unfolded, that makes her seem open and waiting.

Her breasts aren't large, much smaller than Masaki's. The comparison, though unavoidable, feels crude and not necessary so he instead focuses on the best thing about them: their shape is perfect, shaped just round enough to fit into his hand, which is what he does. He cups both of her breasts in his hands and they are so delicate and soft it feels like they could melt under the head of his palms. His mouth covers hers and when she kisses him she closes her eyes, not demurely but in a relaxed sort of ecstasy.

He's seen Masaki naked before, he can't help but remember and it was completely on accident. Masaki wasn't embarrassed and tried to make up for his embarrassment by joking about the situation, which made it worse. That's the only way he knows about Masaki's breasts. Ryuuken thought about her naked a few times after that, and it felt distasteful to him. It wasn't that she wasn't beautiful, because she_ was_. But she wasn't "his". And he didn't want her to be "his", her body to be "his" and her body to bear his children. He felt nothing toward her beside the love that comes from friendship, companionship. Familial adoration. He'd feel sick to think of their future because it would be a loveless marriage of obligation. That's all. Could he have learned to love Masaki? Perhaps. Would she ever love him? No, but she'd be too much of a good person to ever let on otherwise.

Kanae loved him, and so did Masaki (the same way Ryuuken loved Masaki—_like family_) but Kanae's love was gut-deep and slowly killing her inside. When Ryuuken looked in Kanae's face it mirrored his own desperation to carve his way out of expectations. The look in her eyes was troubled and on the verge of tears more often than not and he was usually responsible, indirectly, for her tears, when they did spill. The night he saw her crying, standing like a patient sentinel, her body dry from the umbrella but her face electrified with emotion and her tears rolling uncontrollably he wanted to reach out and stroke a thumb across her cheeks. It would do them no good. She needed his words to soothe her.

He didn't think he could give her that either. His reassurance he was okay would suffice.

That night he felt like a prisoner digging through concrete with a spoon, trying to reach the outside. How can a person trapped save someone else?

The warmth of her body now is soothing. The room is cold, but the warmth of her body soothes more through mind than sensation. She is alive under his touch, and knows just as much about sexual intricacies as he does (not much, but they know what they want.) It's been several weeks since Masaki left, it feels like it's been ten years since he was in high school and a lifetime since that night he failed to save Masaki. But the sight of Kanae's hair as she lies on it reminds him of the sky that night, the night in the rain when someone came to save_ him_. It was completely black. The two things are irrevocably linked in his mind now – the sight of Kanae's crying face, and the murky night sky hovering above them like a specter. Kanae reminds him of the mixed feelings of relief, confusion, guilt and longing to stop her tears.

He begins to kiss her neck, devour every inch of her pale skin, as pale as his, and very delicately, she whispers his name into his shoulder. When their eyes meet again, her face has warmed into desire like slow, melted honey and she doesn't look afraid or reserved. She isn't the soft-spoken girl, timid and yielding right now. He doubts she ever will be again.

She whispers his name again, louder, and runs her hands through his hair. The feeling of her short nails and the soft pads of her fingers touching him so gingerly is delicious.

"Kanae," he mirrors back, and it's so rare they are not "master" and "Katagiri" that it's almost hilarious and they're both laughing before either of them can stop it. It takes several minutes before they stop, Kanae's eyes closed again, squinted in laughter. It feels like he's finally breathing fresh air.

His fringe- the long strands of hair, bone-white and choppy that hang over his eyes- are slicked to his forehead wet with sweat. She reaches up again and brushes them back, barely touching his face. They haven't even begun and his face is already flushed from the craving, held back for so, so long. Longer than it had to be, he thinks. It feels crude again to think of how long he's wanted _this _body, but he knows she's wanted him for longer than she can remember. The desire, now mutual, is not a stranger to either of them.

The night sky outside is clear but moonless and the only light comes from the lamp on the cabinet across the room. Kanae's face is rosy and beautiful, spent from sex and that black hair of hers is bunched under her, propping herself on an elbow, face to fist, looking down at the tangled sheets.

"It feels strange," she says, breaking the silence they've shared since Ryuuken came, and Kanae shortly after, a silence only punctuated by their gasping breath, and small whimpers of post-coital bliss from Kanae.

For a few minutes, they both just lay on their backs, completely naked, the sheets pulled from the corners of the beds and the room no longer feels cold to Ryuuken, but a delicious cool touching his heated skin.

When Kanae braces herself against her elbow and leans up, Ryuuken turns on his side to face her. She says nothing, only runs a finger down his arm, so tenderly compared to the hand that had been fisted in his hair not too long ago, her bony knees wrapped around his back, her long neck stretched as she threw her head back.

He watches her finger from the corner of his eye, tracing the contours of his arm, muscles slender but taut from archery. "What feels strange?" he asks.

Kanae's eyes widen. "Oh, I mean … it was wonderful. I felt … I felt –" she stops and looks away. "No, _that _was wonderful. That was what I really always thought it would be."

"Always?" Ryuuken echoes, trying to keep the amusement of his voice.

She doesn't quail under the lilt in his voice but allows herself a smile, barely there, just a twisting of her small lips. "Is that shameful? It is, isn't it? Always. I've thought about doing this since I was old enough to think of things like that."

"Then what feels strange?"

"Strange is the wrong word to use, perhaps." She smiles again and says in a rush, "I'm not used to feeling happy."

"I don't need to ask what you're used to feeling, do I?"

"A lot of things, actually," she answers. "Sadness, uselessness, jealousy. That last one has been tearing me apart … Ryuuken." The way she says his name is as though she's tasting it, something tasted not often but always welcomed.

A glazed look rolls down her face, her mouth slack in thought as she continues. "I didn't want to dislike Masaki. She's such a wonderful person and I …"

"Why are we talking about Masaki?" he whispers, though he knows the answer. Masaki was always the elephant in the room, the obstacle blocking the two of them and tonight that barrier has been smashed in such a spectacular way. It would be odd to not mention her.

Later, Kanae, holding her newborn son, red from birth and crying, and Kanae herself weakened from being in labor for so very long and looking so fragile Ryuuken feels he can't touch her, she repeats herself, says the same thing she says the night they first made love.

"I feel so bad," she says in bed that night, in a voice as low as she one she used when she whispered his name as he ran his tongue down her collarbone, but it's not restrained now, merely quiet. "But I'm glad this is what happened."

As hard as it has been, as hard as it will be, he wants to tell her he is too. He just smiles at her, a small smile that mirrored her earlier one and touches her black, black hair.

When she's lying in bed, holding their child, and Ryuuken is happy for many things, so many things he can't even count, but mostly at that moment that she and the baby are fine, she says, "I'm glad this is what happened."

And that time he murmurs back, too heavy with emotion to really talk, "I am too."


End file.
